El Camino de Santiago
Buenos dias, Here is an article who talks about Compostella's pilgrimage, step of our trip that we are happy to relate to you. El camino de Santiago The Saint James pilgrimage welcomes pilgrims from all over the world, who, in the begining, came there to pray on the relics of Saint James, apostol of Jesus. Others were walking on the same way following the sunset until the last sunset, on the ocean: the end of the world at this time. And here we are; on the Way from Madrid until Finisterra. We traveled during 48 days, 780 km by feet.
Between cold, hot, rain, wind, sun, snow, hail, we lived the life of a pilgrim on the Way to Compostella.
To eat, it's the "pilgrims menu" in bars, which are the same from the beginning until the end, or pick-nick in a field, in the mountain, or in cities.
To sleep it's in "albergues", kind of youth hostel with big dormitories. In each village for almost nothing, between 0 and 10 euros, we slept in a lot of different dormitories with a lot of different people.
To walk, only our feet, and also our dear walking sticks that we found when we started our road.
To speak, it's spanish, so we learned a bit.
From Madrid until Sahagùn, we walked on the "Madrid Way", The lonely Way, where we didn't meet any pilgrims but many inhabitants of all the little villages that we crossed, really nice, attentionate and helpfull people! It is on this way that we became vegan eater. In fact, after crossing so many farms with bad smells where animals are inside all day long, walking through all those monocultures meant to feed those animals, we became a bit alergic to that. So, now, we discover a new food culture where we use only plants! And, we can tell you that we are in great shape, and super happy, we feel more in link with our thoughts and more "eco-responsible". We dicovered that when it's not little, local and good quality exploitations, animal products are super bad for the environment, for the life of the animals and by the way for human economy. We also feel like we eat more healthy because we said goodbye to all kind of cream, cheeses, eggs and other biscuits! We start to learn how to cook vegan snacks, and it's super tasty !!
From Sahagùn to Santiago de Compostella, we walked on the "French Way", the one which starts in France, in Saint-jean-de-pied-de-port, famous for it's nickname: the pilgrims' highway. We met on this way, so many pilgrims, all of them on the Way for different reasons, each one his own story, each one his own walk. Sometimes we follow the same people for some days, then our rythms are not the same anymore and we loose each others, maybe to meet again later. It's like a family, with this special link between pilgrims, dormitory neighbour, friend for some kilometers.
After some mountain tops full of snow and some hundred kilometers in our feet, we realise that we are still here, walking everyday, even if we took the decision to do it on the spur of the moment. We benefit from walking, everyday, our only goal is to walk, between 8 and 28km, depending of the weather, our energy and our needs. There are hostels everywhere because the Way welcomes every year around 300 000 pilgrims. Also we didn't need any maps, we just had to follow the yellow arrows which tell us the way, really easy way ! It gives us so much free time to think, meditate, be alive,...
The Way made us evolve, thanks to our books, the people that we met, our talks, but also a lot thanks to the walk! Where we find a slow rythm, more "human", where 1km isn't nothing, and where being present is more present. It's also for us, in the heart of this beautiful nature that curiosity, attention and wonder awake. We also took really good care of our body witch is our tool the most important to finish the Way.
When we arrive in Santiago, it's strange, we meet again pilgrims already met on the road, we arrive in a big city, super touristic, and we feel a bit lost. Lucky us, when we arrived in Santiago, it was the begining of the "Holly week" before Easter, where, in Spain, Christian spirit is still present. There are processions with men and women with face mask, caring huge sculptures of the life of Jesus. On sunday we had the luck to participate in the Palms mass, full of people, and see with our eyes, the big thurible, going freely in the cathedrale! Beautiful show !
It's in this holly city that we did something special. Yes, for many weeks, Anna had in mind to shave her head. To live an exprerience of detatchment towards material things, like tibetans monks are doing. It's true that our hair is one of the first thing that we care about, at least for us. Aymeric, agreed with this theory, did the same, and here we are, without our dear hair. It's possible that someone is wearing Anna's hair at this moment as a wig (have a look in the association "solid'hair"). And also, is just so cool to see the shape of our head no ?
The way to Finisterra calls us and we start walking again to finish our pilgrimage, let's go to the end of the world, the more west of Europe. It's with a lot of joy that we meet the ocean, and end our long tour. We turn around, and hit the road again in the other side, strange feeling to be without a goal, without destination.
Since the Way, we feel like we are floating: we feel in the present, like if the past and the futur are blurry. It's nice and strange at the same time, but we are feeling good. Since the end of our way, we spent some times in two ecovillages in Navarra, and are now in Andaloucia, in the mountains, in a consciousness devellopment center. Everything is rolling for us, the sun is with us more and more. Une abrazo and buen camino!